I don't really see why that should necessarily be a sarcastic remark... I do use passwords of that length/complexity. But they're easy to remember, because they're pass PHRASES, not a pass WORDS. For systems that don't allow it, I have a variable 8-ish character long string that I've memorised (and the possible variation methods). I far prefer typing my passphrases though, for both speed and accuracy.
Surely that can't work... if it hides your ******** whenever you type it, then it would make it really obvious what your ******** is if it's a standard dictionary word when you use it in a sentence. I don't think it masks ********s at all.
I don't see how you're going to get an effective central force out of that without a lot of fine tuning. And I don't know what mechanism is supposed to hook local portions of space up to distant locations in any manner other than random. At least in quantum cosmology you could imagine some kind of chaotic spacetime foam.
"Chaotic" != "Random"... But if you prefer to call it random, then okay, let's work with that definition. The mechanism is the main thrust of my idea - "twisted" dimensions.
If dark matter is affecting galactic dynamics so strongly that we have to postulate that 90% of the matter out there is dark matter, I can't see how you're going to avoid strong violations.
Work with the word "random" - Quite "at random", our local area doesn't have any large clumps, and it's distributed so finely that we don't see it. This is also the case for most of the universe in general, so we're nowhere special in that regard. The areas that ARE special are those where it's "at random" clumping up the endpoints to a noticeable amount of gravity. The effect that is seen with galaxies is also nothing special - if the "empty space" contains fairly evenly distributed end-points for gravity, it's possible to be weak enough on a small scale, while being pretty strong on a large scale, giving the effect we see.
To make predictions that are really testable, you need to embed it in a quantitative framework, like a gravitational field theory.
Which is why I'm still calling this an "idea", which may become a "hypothesis", which will hopefully be testable. At this point, I don't make any claims whatsoever other than that it's an interesting idea which might be plausible enough to warrant further investigation.
that doesn't explain a gravitational force that acts like dark matter does; it would probably be more like putting two galaxies on top of each other
Yes, I've had to really think about this - it's simply "not enough" to postulate that all of the "leftover" gravity from one relatively large place is displaced somewhere else - that just wouldn't work - a galaxy that had an extra galaxy's worth of gravity (or MUCH MUCH more if it's all the "leftover" gravity from a gravity force that's as strong as the other forces) would simply collapse immediately and we'd very much notice it.
Or you could also postulate that matter is connected up randomly with other matter, but with that it would hard to explain any consistent attractive effective force, let alone one that is attractive in the manner required.
I don't see that's necessarily the case. Rather than saying "random", I prefer to say "not obvious" - that is, the "extra" gravity from Earth (just as an example) isn't necessarily projecting an Earth sized blob of gravity (or Earth * 10^36 sized blob) at one other point in space. More that much smaller parts of Earth are projecting much smaller blobs of gravity at various locations. In places where it happens that lots of "end points" for the gravity are, we see these apparent clumps of dark matter.
And then I suspect that you would see huge apparent violations in conservation of energy if there are significant interactions going on in unseen extra dimensions.
Who's to say we'd see "huge" apparent violations? If our local zone is relatively free of these clumps of endpoints, we'd likely only see VERY minor apparent violations, which would go overlooked unless specifically looked for. The current version of my idea has the end-points spread out all over space, with some places having more than others (the clumps). So, if it were to be correct, we could theoretically test for it by looking for minute amounts of extra gravity in places that shouldn't have them. Unfortunately, stuck at the bottom of a gravity well such as Earth, that's extra-ordinarily hard to do - such an experiment should be conducted in a place with far less local gravity.
The universe is a big place and there's not that much matter in it - if the "extra" gravity was mostly spread evenly, it'd be pretty thin in most places (to the point of being REALLY hard to notice), and only obvious in places where there's more of it, or in very large structures (galaxies). This is pretty consistent with what we see with regard to dark matter.
The usual extra dimensional gravity scenarios are (a) gravitational interactions between matter and itself in extra dimensions ("large extra dimensions"), and (b) interactions beteween matter in our universe and matter in a "parallel universe next to ours" (e.g., "braneworlds"). I think dark matter scenarios have been proposed in both, but I think they both have problems and they're even more speculative than dark matter is.
I don't like the braneworlds idea - I actually think it's MORE speculative than my idea because it requires more assumptions. Mine really only requires one, despite that it's a VERY VERY big one. It is theoretically testable though (once/if I have a hypothesis worth testing), so it should be possible (although likely not very easy) to either confirm or deny it fairly conclusively.
Are the extra dimensions actually limited to those of one of the current models (i.e. the most common 10 dimensional string theory model or one of its alternates?)
(In other words, are you assuming the topology is the only thing that really matters, or just that you could find an interesting topology that shows some predictive power, and then refine both it and how many dimensions it applies to, and the tweaks needed would be easier to test and/or simpler and/or more beautiful than starting from the other end?)
Basically, I'm not YET making any assumptions about the topology, but it IS the most important factor in the idea itself. Once I think I have enough of an idea about what I need to be looking for, the first step will be to look at existing models (such as the more common string theory models) and see if they fit (or can be reasonably altered to fit without breaking other things), but if nothing does, I'll try to see if a topology could be described in any way that fits, whether it's a pre-existing idea or not.
Are any of the extra dimensions supposed to be time-like, or at least significantly partially time-like?
Would the number of time-like dimensions involved impose significant additional limitations on testability, and would the difficulty of testing in general increase (probably exponentially or by some similarly steep function) if the number of time-like dimensions required increases?
Time or time-like dimensions could DEFINITELY be a problem for testability - if gravity can "leak" in time as well as more traditional space, then there's no definitive way to measure the amount observed with any real meaning (perhaps there's more leaking to a point 2 billion years from now, and we'll suddenly see a huge spike of "dark matter" around that time, or perhaps quite a lot leaked in to the past - although at least that would let us see that things happened that we couldn't reasonably account for without some extra gravity suddenly appearing). My idea hasn't really considered time-like dimensions yet, although if time really can simply be described 100% as a dimension that is no different to the others, then of course it has to be a consideration. Initially, I will try to consider cases that do NOT have a time-like function to them (completely "static" universe for the sake of simplicity), but I do think it may become unavoidable.
All of this aside, I'd like to re-iterate that after making several posts on this subject, it is still just an "idea" rather than a "hypothesis" (let alone a "theory"), and I haven't considered a lot of things, so there are still MANY things that could trip me up and render this whole line of reasoning dead before I get to the grittier parts such as the possibility of time-like dimensions.
I would seriously pay good money to watch a movie based on Nethack! It has to be complete though - dwarvish mines, the town, the castle, elemental planes at the end, everything. I think Sokoban should either be skipped or glossed over though - it might be a little dull in movie form;)
Hmmm... I think you're latching on to my mention of entanglement a bit much and that's causing a misunderstanding - looking back at my last posts, I can see how I gave that impression... sorry. I'm not saying that there's any relationship between entangled particles and my ideas about dark matter directly - I'm not positing an "entanglement force" of any kind. I was simply giving two somewhat separate ideas with a related core idea - that of the twisted dimensions allowing for distant objects to be in reality "right beside each other" (itself not a new idea really, just something I'm expanding on in a different way).
The mention of entangled particles is one idea that comes from it - you can have two particles that appear distant, but are not, and so the fact that they can influence each other directly does not violate any laws (no faster than light comms between them). The mention of dark matter being gravity from known objects has nothing to do with these entangled particles other than that the same mechanism of "twisted dimensions" underlies it. We all know that gravity appears much weaker than the other forces, and this gives us a relatively "neat" out for that not only by saying it is actually the same strength and the rest is just "going somewhere" (as has been put forward before in the realm of string theory), but ALSO that the "somewhere" it's going is somewhere that we can actually see and detect (the gravity we attribute to "dark matter")
The key to the idea is to find if there's any correlation between the amount of unaccounted for gravitational influence (dark matter) and the amount of gravity that non-dark-matter would put out if gravity were the same strength as the other forces (just only LOCALLY weaker, with the remainder going elsewhere). If they are approximately similar, it would be a great thing for my idea. Basically, gravity appears to be about 10^36 times weaker than the other forces. Currently, that's a completely different order of magnitude than the amount of matter vs "dark matter", so it does throw a big spanner in the works. Of course, plenty of the gravity could be popping up in places where it's not obviously affecting anything else (there's a LOT of (almost) empty space between the galaxies and we don't spend much time looking at it!)
Yes... that's the basic idea of it! Gravity can "flow" through these other dimensions, but the other forces can not, so even though they're of the same strength, they LOCALLY appear to be very different. Then, the gravity "pops up" somewhere else, and we have this unexplained EXTRA gravity there that we can't account for. We call it "dark matter", but actually can not detect anything other than the gravity. So, my idea is that there actually is NOT anything other than the gravity, and the source of that gravity is perfectly normal matter that happens to be somewhere else in space.
What would be a really nice find would be to see some objects being attracted to a point that quite clearly doesn't have anything else in it - a dust storm condensing in to a planetoid for example. That would show there's "gravity without matter" at that location, which could easily be explained by my idea. What would also be interesting is that the planetoid in question would then appear to have more mass than it actually does, as it would have its own gravity in addition to the extra that pulled it together to begin with.
I had a Wang 286 once. Actually, I think it was the first intel box I ever owned. That was WAY after it should have been trashed though - all of my friends had 486's and I had my beloved Amiga. The Wang was just a toy I acquired somewhere for the fun of it.
Other than the large amount of seemingly "dark matter"...
entanglement just isn't that relevant on cosmological scales
Certainly true, but I wasn't really implying it needs to be. If we have a pair of entangled particles, they can THEN be separated by (apparently) quite any distance in classical space and nevertheless remain entangled. We haven't found a good way to use this as "faster than light communication", and there are very strong arguments that it can't be, however it seems to remain fact that these particles are somehow "connected" despite being physically quite separate ("spooky action at a distance"). This is why my hypothesis considers that they may actually not be physically separate at all - they are "right beside each other" through twisted "extra" dimensions, just in some way that we currently do not have the ability to measure or understand particularly well. This leads on to the idea of "dark matter" being gravity from "nearby" objects that are classically quite distant, but in reality quite "close".
Note, I don't actually disagree with you, but clearly there's something going on that we really don't understand very well yet. Also note that I'm probably wrong - my idea is just that, an idea - I don't necessarily believe it!
My beginnings of a hypothesis are that it's gravity from THIS universe from folded dimensions. "Parallel Universe", while possible, seems to require too many further assumptions.
Fun, yes. False, almost certainly, but not necessarily - that's the point of trying to formulate a hypothesis.
For some time, I've been making random notes from articles relating to dark matter, string theory and quantum entanglement. I've been trying to form a hypothesis of dark matter with information from all of these three.
Interestingly, this article has now given a lot more focus to one part of the idea that was forming that was a bit "wishy-washy" before (okay, it's still very wishy-washy, but less so now).
The overall concept is basically along the lines of quantum entanglement being a property of the fact that two entangled particles are in fact just ONE string that's being bent through space in some rather unconventional ways (extra dimensions neither being "large and flat" nor "very very small and coiled", but rather "hideously complex monstrous things"). This, combined with gravity ("graviton"strings) being freely able to travel through those dimensions rather than tied to an endpoint (hence appearing much weaker than the other forces, even though ALL forces have absolutely identical strength (another wild-ass guess, just because it would be "nice")) would lead us to an elegant idea about dark matter actually being gravity from perfectly normal matter that happens to be showing up in unexpected places.
The fact that there are clumps of it definitely does not blow my ideas out of the water, but it does mean I need to re-work my idea of "hideously complex monstrous things" for the extra dimensions as I was assuming dark matter showed up "generally" in areas with other matter rather than specific clumps as "normal" does. It needs to be more structured than I had been thinking for a clump of matter in one place to form a "clump of dark matter" (e.g. the gravitational effect seen) elsewhere. That's actually a good thing though, because any structure lent to the process makes it closer to a testable hypothesis (anything completely unstructured could never become one, and having "no real clue" about the structure as I was, made it far too vague.)
Note that this is still a very early infancy idea, and is somewhat around the "wild guess" point rather than even "hypothesis", so I'd be quite happy for people to comment on this - can anyone blow me completely out of the water on this line of thinking? Or can anyone offer ideas that support it? Or even just expand it a little? Does anyone know of any other research along these lines that I could read?
(1) CO2 is generally a Good Thing as far as biological processes go. What makes you think that life with previous high levels of this trace gas would be unpleasant for human beings?
Because at the time the CO2 levels were very high, it was also very warm. Much warmer than humans generally find comfortable.
(2) Your CO2 positive feedback loop argument doesn't hold water because we know that CO2 levels were higher in the past and yet the Earth did not turn into Venus and we still had ice ages afterwards.
That doesn't show that there's no possible positive feedback loop, only that there are factors that can stop or reverse such a system (e.g. a greater number of CO2 hungry plants springing up in the environment that is now more favourable to them).
The other problem is that the argument that CO2 increases can cause the temperature to rise significantly has not been substantiated experimentally. Even theoretically, there is no "from the ground up" explanation (i.e., devoid of handwaving) of how this should actually happen.
It's a generally established consensus that it is a factor in warming (along with other potential "greenhouse" gases). Note that the term "greenhouse" is a fairly simple and accurate depiction - just like the glass of a greenhouse, it traps the heat. I'm not saying CO2 is the ONLY factor, nor am I saying that it's necessarily even the most important, but it's certainly an established fact that a significant amount of CO2 can have this kind of effect (you could even do such an experiment yourself if you wished - a can of compressed CO2, a lightbulb, a small box and a thermometer should do the trick.
(3) Saying temperatures are rising much faster than we should be suggests you're buying into the now comprehensively debunked hockey stick reconstruction. The hockey stick really is indefensible at this point. The evidence is simply not there for claiming the current rate of temperature rise is unprecedented.
Sorry, I don't know of this "hockey stick" reconstruction you're talking about. I assume from your wording that it's some kind of graph shaped like a hockey stick that shows extreme warming and is probably often shown in the US where this problem is still actually considered a debate rather than fact (in the rest of the world, no-one is debating it...it's considered fact). I just did a quick Google search, and the graph looks a little extreme really, but I haven't seen the data for or against that particular graph, so I can't comment really.
(4) Your response to my point about negative feedback is a non sequiteur. You say that we appear to be speeding up some natural process (I'm not sure I buy that, but let's go with it for now) and that the consequences of this may be bad (especially if you believe climate modellers can do what they claim, which is pretty much way beyond what any other modellers claim to be able to do). So we ought to do something to reduce the effect we're having.
The problem with this is that it's argument for action from a position of ignorance.
Yes, that's correct - it's an argument for action from a position of some ignorance about the potential results of our current action.
The argument for inaction *now* goes like this:
- we do not have convincing evidence that the current situation is our fault (e.g., the mean temperature hasn't changed much over the last ten years despite increasing CO2 emissions);
The thing is, that if you look at this or this, you're just going to say that all you see is that we came out of a "little ice age" recently (I don't disagree with that by the way), so I'm not going to point at those graphs
Spending $1000 can never make you go from "rich" to "not rich". If you have not much left afterwards, you weren't rich to begin with. If you were rich to begin with, throwing a random $1000 away doesn't really hurt much.
Honestly, I feel a little ashamed about it these days, but back in 1999 when I had more dollars than sense (I was young, I was rich, and the world was scared of Y2K), I once gave an annoying homeless guy $500 to never ever beg on that street again. He kept his end of the bargain too as far as I could tell.
To define life in unequivocal terms is still a challenge for scientists."
Not really - it's a challenge for linguists - scientists can happily continue to do research without needing to define it. (see "Pluto and its planethood")
Ick... that's just nasty. I've never actually come across any software like this. In general, everything I've seen just treats "first name" and "last name" as separate strings, so first name + last name would be something like "Maria\0von Trapp\0". I can see if you treated it as a single string "Maria von Trapp\0" and then tried to determine the last name by getting the text after the last space it could be messy, but I wasn't aware there were any serious developers with that little foresight! (also, isn't it EASIER to work with two strings rather than one and then parsing it?!)
Ah, okay... I thought your original post was meaning the paper should change its name from "Enquirer" to "Inquirer", not that it was already spelled "Inquirer" and that it was spelled incorrectly when being referenced.
There are some scientists who believe the climatic change we are seeing is not a by product of man's industrial activities but part of a natural cycle.
Which just goes to prove that having the job title "scientist" is no indication that you have the slightest clue about the climate. Point me to the research of a serious climatologist that believes this, and I'll read it with interest. Papers by people from outside that specific field - not interested! (hey, I'm a "computer scientist", would you like to read my paper about psychology?)
It all depends on whether you believe that CO2 increases precede or follow temperature change.
Why do you present it as an either/or scenario? There's strong evidence that BOTH are true.
How convenient that we're trying this on the only planet we have and not some spare planet that wouldn't matter if it went awry.
The problem is that it's (most likely) already "gone awry". If we do nothing, we're (most likely) screwed. If we do something, we MIGHT be screwed. It's just a case of taking a better bet over a worse one.
There is also a problem with say, North America makes changes, but growing nations like China and India do not. They will replace our former gas guzzling ways and the sum total is a zero balance.
There's a problem with that logic. Let's say we can define it as some figures (pulled out of a hat) like so:
Current:
US: 500 units
EU: 480 units
China: 100 units
India: 80 units
Total: 1160 units
Your concern is that if we reduce, and they increase, it'll be zero sum, like this:
US: 300 units
EU: 300 units
China: 280 units
India: 280 units
Total: 1160 units
MY concern is that if we don't reduce, and they increase, it'll be much worse!:
US: 500 units
EU: 480 units
China: 280 units
India: 280 units
Total: 1540 units
While it's not good that they're increasing so much, and we do need to consider how to reduce everything GLOBALLY, not just in certain countries, it makes NO sense to say that just because someone else is increasing that we shouldn't reduce.
It's also worth keeping in mind that there are many environmentally positive things that can be done that do NOT have a huge economic impact. We don't have to "break" ourselves in our efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. Yes, it will cost, but it needn't cost to such a level that we really suffer from it.
(a) that there have been times in the past with wayyy higher CO2 concentrations and
Yes, and it would have been pretty unpleasant for human beings had we been around at the time.
(b) that historically CO2 raises happen *after* temperature raises and
Yep, which just goes to show that if CO2 also causes temperature rises (pretty fairly conclusive that it does), that we'll end up in a rather painful positive feedback loop (CO2 goes up, causing temperature to go up, which causes CO2 to go up more)
(c) some of the measured temperature rise (of course, you are suitably sceptical about those measurements as well, aren't you?) can be explained by the fact we're coming out of an ice age and
I think that's pretty well accepted also, but historically there's nothing similar to what's happening now - we're rising MUCH faster than we should be.
(d) the fact that the Earth is neither a boiling Hellhole nor a ball of ice suggests that fairly effective negative feedback is at work in the climate?
No, that suggests that the Earth is (surprise surprise) a pretty good place for people to live in general. The concern is that it may not stay that way.
The concern is not that temperature is rising - that happens. It rises, it falls - there are perfectly normal cycles to all of this, and as long as we can learn to understand it, we can learn to live with it. What the concern IS is that we appear to be having an effect on our climate and we don't understand enough about what we're doing to it. It currently appears as if our effect is speeding up the "natural" warming quite significantly, and we're having a very hard time trying to figure out what the consequences of this will be. Maybe our effects will be nullified by natural processes and we can just carry on, but maybe they won't be and we'll end up killing ourselves (or just making life extremely unpleasant).
Because we're sitting here at "don't know", we have the choice of either ignoring the situation or trying to do something about it. I UNDERSTAND the arguments for both, but I don't agree with the argument for doing nothing.
The argument for doing nothing basically says, "well, we don't understand it, and doing something could cause economic problems. Because we don't understand it, we can't necessarily do anything about it.".
The argument for doing something goes, "We don't understand it, but we are certain that we are having an impact of some kind, and that has the potential to be very bad (it also has the potential to not be bad, but we're pretty sure it will be bad, and we don't want to take the gamble). So, what we'll do is try to reduce the factors that cause our effect."
We may not completely understand our climate, but: 1) We CAN see we're having an influence on it 2) We aren't 100% certain, but are pretty sure that our influence on it will cause long term bad effects 3) We are quite confident we know the cause of our effect on the climate (CO2 amongst many other things)
Because of this, the sensible choice seems to be "let's try to reduce or negate the effect we're having on the environment, because we can't be sure if that effect is going to cause us serious problems or not".
Car analogy time: I know very little about cars, and have to rely on what others tell me. I'm driving my car, and the oil light comes on. I recently changed the oil, and I haven't noticed any leaks, although honestly I wasn't paying much attention before now. My passenger suggests that maybe it's just that a circuit going to the oil light indicator is shorted somewhere, which is why it's showing that, and I really needn't worry - my car will be fine. Now, I can not be certain if he's right or wrong without investigation. So, I take my car to a mechanic, who checks only the circuitry going to the light. He says it's okay. At this point, I can choose to continue driving my car, thinking the mechanic missed something and it really is just a problem with the light, or I can ask the mechanic to check the oil system, even though I know there's going to be a larger financial cost involved in doing so. What should I do?
There's quite a few, and it generally depends on where you're from. Where I grew up, if you said "Saran wrap", people would stare at you blankly. You'd have to say "Glad Wrap"
Others of course include the aforementioned by others Hoover and Xerox, as well as Post It Note, Nescafe, Band Aid, Coke (the drink), Bic, Milo, PalmPilot (now obsolete almost everywhere AFAIK), Aspirin, Google, and others.
I agree with you, however would just like to point out three things: 1) Using "Xerox" as a verb never really happened outside the US - in other English speaking countries, people generally just say "copy" or "photocopy". 2) Not directed at you personally, but someone else said that Xerox invented photocopiers - no, they didn't, although they did introduce the first "office" photocopiers. 3) (and my main point in replying) In ENGLISH there is no central office defining the language. That's not actually true for all languages...
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, my name is, WernerBrandis, my, voice is, my, passport, verify, me?
I don't really see why that should necessarily be a sarcastic remark... I do use passwords of that length/complexity. But they're easy to remember, because they're pass PHRASES, not a pass WORDS.
For systems that don't allow it, I have a variable 8-ish character long string that I've memorised (and the possible variation methods). I far prefer typing my passphrases though, for both speed and accuracy.
Surely that can't work... if it hides your ******** whenever you type it, then it would make it really obvious what your ******** is if it's a standard dictionary word when you use it in a sentence. I don't think it masks ********s at all.
I don't see how you're going to get an effective central force out of that without a lot of fine tuning. And I don't know what mechanism is supposed to hook local portions of space up to distant locations in any manner other than random. At least in quantum cosmology you could imagine some kind of chaotic spacetime foam.
"Chaotic" != "Random"... But if you prefer to call it random, then okay, let's work with that definition. The mechanism is the main thrust of my idea - "twisted" dimensions.
If dark matter is affecting galactic dynamics so strongly that we have to postulate that 90% of the matter out there is dark matter, I can't see how you're going to avoid strong violations.
Work with the word "random" - Quite "at random", our local area doesn't have any large clumps, and it's distributed so finely that we don't see it. This is also the case for most of the universe in general, so we're nowhere special in that regard. The areas that ARE special are those where it's "at random" clumping up the endpoints to a noticeable amount of gravity. The effect that is seen with galaxies is also nothing special - if the "empty space" contains fairly evenly distributed end-points for gravity, it's possible to be weak enough on a small scale, while being pretty strong on a large scale, giving the effect we see.
To make predictions that are really testable, you need to embed it in a quantitative framework, like a gravitational field theory.
Which is why I'm still calling this an "idea", which may become a "hypothesis", which will hopefully be testable. At this point, I don't make any claims whatsoever other than that it's an interesting idea which might be plausible enough to warrant further investigation.
that doesn't explain a gravitational force that acts like dark matter does; it would probably be more like putting two galaxies on top of each other
Yes, I've had to really think about this - it's simply "not enough" to postulate that all of the "leftover" gravity from one relatively large place is displaced somewhere else - that just wouldn't work - a galaxy that had an extra galaxy's worth of gravity (or MUCH MUCH more if it's all the "leftover" gravity from a gravity force that's as strong as the other forces) would simply collapse immediately and we'd very much notice it.
Or you could also postulate that matter is connected up randomly with other matter, but with that it would hard to explain any consistent attractive effective force, let alone one that is attractive in the manner required.
I don't see that's necessarily the case. Rather than saying "random", I prefer to say "not obvious" - that is, the "extra" gravity from Earth (just as an example) isn't necessarily projecting an Earth sized blob of gravity (or Earth * 10^36 sized blob) at one other point in space. More that much smaller parts of Earth are projecting much smaller blobs of gravity at various locations. In places where it happens that lots of "end points" for the gravity are, we see these apparent clumps of dark matter.
And then I suspect that you would see huge apparent violations in conservation of energy if there are significant interactions going on in unseen extra dimensions.
Who's to say we'd see "huge" apparent violations? If our local zone is relatively free of these clumps of endpoints, we'd likely only see VERY minor apparent violations, which would go overlooked unless specifically looked for. The current version of my idea has the end-points spread out all over space, with some places having more than others (the clumps). So, if it were to be correct, we could theoretically test for it by looking for minute amounts of extra gravity in places that shouldn't have them. Unfortunately, stuck at the bottom of a gravity well such as Earth, that's extra-ordinarily hard to do - such an experiment should be conducted in a place with far less local gravity.
The universe is a big place and there's not that much matter in it - if the "extra" gravity was mostly spread evenly, it'd be pretty thin in most places (to the point of being REALLY hard to notice), and only obvious in places where there's more of it, or in very large structures (galaxies). This is pretty consistent with what we see with regard to dark matter.
The usual extra dimensional gravity scenarios are (a) gravitational interactions between matter and itself in extra dimensions ("large extra dimensions"), and (b) interactions beteween matter in our universe and matter in a "parallel universe next to ours" (e.g., "braneworlds"). I think dark matter scenarios have been proposed in both, but I think they both have problems and they're even more speculative than dark matter is.
I don't like the braneworlds idea - I actually think it's MORE speculative than my idea because it requires more assumptions. Mine really only requires one, despite that it's a VERY VERY big one. It is theoretically testable though (once/if I have a hypothesis worth testing), so it should be possible (although likely not very easy) to either confirm or deny it fairly conclusively.
Are the extra dimensions actually limited to those of one of the current models (i.e. the most common 10 dimensional string theory model or one of its alternates?)
(In other words, are you assuming the topology is the only thing that really matters, or just that you could find an interesting topology that shows some predictive power, and then refine both it and how many dimensions it applies to, and the tweaks needed would be easier to test and/or simpler and/or more beautiful than starting from the other end?)
Basically, I'm not YET making any assumptions about the topology, but it IS the most important factor in the idea itself. Once I think I have enough of an idea about what I need to be looking for, the first step will be to look at existing models (such as the more common string theory models) and see if they fit (or can be reasonably altered to fit without breaking other things), but if nothing does, I'll try to see if a topology could be described in any way that fits, whether it's a pre-existing idea or not.
Are any of the extra dimensions supposed to be time-like, or at least significantly partially time-like?
Would the number of time-like dimensions involved impose significant additional limitations on testability, and would the difficulty of testing in general increase (probably exponentially or by some similarly steep function) if the number of time-like dimensions required increases?
Time or time-like dimensions could DEFINITELY be a problem for testability - if gravity can "leak" in time as well as more traditional space, then there's no definitive way to measure the amount observed with any real meaning (perhaps there's more leaking to a point 2 billion years from now, and we'll suddenly see a huge spike of "dark matter" around that time, or perhaps quite a lot leaked in to the past - although at least that would let us see that things happened that we couldn't reasonably account for without some extra gravity suddenly appearing). My idea hasn't really considered time-like dimensions yet, although if time really can simply be described 100% as a dimension that is no different to the others, then of course it has to be a consideration. Initially, I will try to consider cases that do NOT have a time-like function to them (completely "static" universe for the sake of simplicity), but I do think it may become unavoidable.
All of this aside, I'd like to re-iterate that after making several posts on this subject, it is still just an "idea" rather than a "hypothesis" (let alone a "theory"), and I haven't considered a lot of things, so there are still MANY things that could trip me up and render this whole line of reasoning dead before I get to the grittier parts such as the possibility of time-like dimensions.
I would seriously pay good money to watch a movie based on Nethack! It has to be complete though - dwarvish mines, the town, the castle, elemental planes at the end, everything. I think Sokoban should either be skipped or glossed over though - it might be a little dull in movie form ;)
Hmmm... I think you're latching on to my mention of entanglement a bit much and that's causing a misunderstanding - looking back at my last posts, I can see how I gave that impression... sorry. I'm not saying that there's any relationship between entangled particles and my ideas about dark matter directly - I'm not positing an "entanglement force" of any kind. I was simply giving two somewhat separate ideas with a related core idea - that of the twisted dimensions allowing for distant objects to be in reality "right beside each other" (itself not a new idea really, just something I'm expanding on in a different way).
The mention of entangled particles is one idea that comes from it - you can have two particles that appear distant, but are not, and so the fact that they can influence each other directly does not violate any laws (no faster than light comms between them).
The mention of dark matter being gravity from known objects has nothing to do with these entangled particles other than that the same mechanism of "twisted dimensions" underlies it. We all know that gravity appears much weaker than the other forces, and this gives us a relatively "neat" out for that not only by saying it is actually the same strength and the rest is just "going somewhere" (as has been put forward before in the realm of string theory), but ALSO that the "somewhere" it's going is somewhere that we can actually see and detect (the gravity we attribute to "dark matter")
The key to the idea is to find if there's any correlation between the amount of unaccounted for gravitational influence (dark matter) and the amount of gravity that non-dark-matter would put out if gravity were the same strength as the other forces (just only LOCALLY weaker, with the remainder going elsewhere). If they are approximately similar, it would be a great thing for my idea.
Basically, gravity appears to be about 10^36 times weaker than the other forces. Currently, that's a completely different order of magnitude than the amount of matter vs "dark matter", so it does throw a big spanner in the works. Of course, plenty of the gravity could be popping up in places where it's not obviously affecting anything else (there's a LOT of (almost) empty space between the galaxies and we don't spend much time looking at it!)
Yes... that's the basic idea of it! Gravity can "flow" through these other dimensions, but the other forces can not, so even though they're of the same strength, they LOCALLY appear to be very different. Then, the gravity "pops up" somewhere else, and we have this unexplained EXTRA gravity there that we can't account for. We call it "dark matter", but actually can not detect anything other than the gravity. So, my idea is that there actually is NOT anything other than the gravity, and the source of that gravity is perfectly normal matter that happens to be somewhere else in space.
What would be a really nice find would be to see some objects being attracted to a point that quite clearly doesn't have anything else in it - a dust storm condensing in to a planetoid for example. That would show there's "gravity without matter" at that location, which could easily be explained by my idea. What would also be interesting is that the planetoid in question would then appear to have more mass than it actually does, as it would have its own gravity in addition to the extra that pulled it together to begin with.
Being suspended in a wooden cage in a pit not far above some lava does tend to make one hot, yes...
I had a Wang 286 once. Actually, I think it was the first intel box I ever owned. That was WAY after it should have been trashed though - all of my friends had 486's and I had my beloved Amiga. The Wang was just a toy I acquired somewhere for the fun of it.
On large scales, physics is pretty classical
Other than the large amount of seemingly "dark matter"...
entanglement just isn't that relevant on cosmological scales
Certainly true, but I wasn't really implying it needs to be. If we have a pair of entangled particles, they can THEN be separated by (apparently) quite any distance in classical space and nevertheless remain entangled. We haven't found a good way to use this as "faster than light communication", and there are very strong arguments that it can't be, however it seems to remain fact that these particles are somehow "connected" despite being physically quite separate ("spooky action at a distance"). This is why my hypothesis considers that they may actually not be physically separate at all - they are "right beside each other" through twisted "extra" dimensions, just in some way that we currently do not have the ability to measure or understand particularly well. This leads on to the idea of "dark matter" being gravity from "nearby" objects that are classically quite distant, but in reality quite "close".
Note, I don't actually disagree with you, but clearly there's something going on that we really don't understand very well yet.
Also note that I'm probably wrong - my idea is just that, an idea - I don't necessarily believe it!
My beginnings of a hypothesis are that it's gravity from THIS universe from folded dimensions. "Parallel Universe", while possible, seems to require too many further assumptions.
Fun, yes. False, almost certainly, but not necessarily - that's the point of trying to formulate a hypothesis.
For some time, I've been making random notes from articles relating to dark matter, string theory and quantum entanglement. I've been trying to form a hypothesis of dark matter with information from all of these three.
Interestingly, this article has now given a lot more focus to one part of the idea that was forming that was a bit "wishy-washy" before (okay, it's still very wishy-washy, but less so now).
The overall concept is basically along the lines of quantum entanglement being a property of the fact that two entangled particles are in fact just ONE string that's being bent through space in some rather unconventional ways (extra dimensions neither being "large and flat" nor "very very small and coiled", but rather "hideously complex monstrous things").
This, combined with gravity ("graviton"strings) being freely able to travel through those dimensions rather than tied to an endpoint (hence appearing much weaker than the other forces, even though ALL forces have absolutely identical strength (another wild-ass guess, just because it would be "nice")) would lead us to an elegant idea about dark matter actually being gravity from perfectly normal matter that happens to be showing up in unexpected places.
The fact that there are clumps of it definitely does not blow my ideas out of the water, but it does mean I need to re-work my idea of "hideously complex monstrous things" for the extra dimensions as I was assuming dark matter showed up "generally" in areas with other matter rather than specific clumps as "normal" does. It needs to be more structured than I had been thinking for a clump of matter in one place to form a "clump of dark matter" (e.g. the gravitational effect seen) elsewhere. That's actually a good thing though, because any structure lent to the process makes it closer to a testable hypothesis (anything completely unstructured could never become one, and having "no real clue" about the structure as I was, made it far too vague.)
Note that this is still a very early infancy idea, and is somewhat around the "wild guess" point rather than even "hypothesis", so I'd be quite happy for people to comment on this - can anyone blow me completely out of the water on this line of thinking? Or can anyone offer ideas that support it? Or even just expand it a little? Does anyone know of any other research along these lines that I could read?
(1) CO2 is generally a Good Thing as far as biological processes go. What makes you think that life with previous high levels of this trace gas would be unpleasant for human beings?
Because at the time the CO2 levels were very high, it was also very warm. Much warmer than humans generally find comfortable.
(2) Your CO2 positive feedback loop argument doesn't hold water because we know that CO2 levels were higher in the past and yet the Earth did not turn into Venus and we still had ice ages afterwards.
That doesn't show that there's no possible positive feedback loop, only that there are factors that can stop or reverse such a system (e.g. a greater number of CO2 hungry plants springing up in the environment that is now more favourable to them).
The other problem is that the argument that CO2 increases can cause the temperature to rise significantly has not been substantiated experimentally. Even theoretically, there is no "from the ground up" explanation (i.e., devoid of handwaving) of how this should actually happen.
It's a generally established consensus that it is a factor in warming (along with other potential "greenhouse" gases). Note that the term "greenhouse" is a fairly simple and accurate depiction - just like the glass of a greenhouse, it traps the heat.
I'm not saying CO2 is the ONLY factor, nor am I saying that it's necessarily even the most important, but it's certainly an established fact that a significant amount of CO2 can have this kind of effect (you could even do such an experiment yourself if you wished - a can of compressed CO2, a lightbulb, a small box and a thermometer should do the trick.
(3) Saying temperatures are rising much faster than we should be suggests you're buying into the now comprehensively debunked hockey stick reconstruction. The hockey stick really is indefensible at this point. The evidence is simply not there for claiming the current rate of temperature rise is unprecedented.
Sorry, I don't know of this "hockey stick" reconstruction you're talking about. I assume from your wording that it's some kind of graph shaped like a hockey stick that shows extreme warming and is probably often shown in the US where this problem is still actually considered a debate rather than fact (in the rest of the world, no-one is debating it...it's considered fact). I just did a quick Google search, and the graph looks a little extreme really, but I haven't seen the data for or against that particular graph, so I can't comment really.
(4) Your response to my point about negative feedback is a non sequiteur. You say that we appear to be speeding up some natural process (I'm not sure I buy that, but let's go with it for now) and that the consequences of this may be bad (especially if you believe climate modellers can do what they claim, which is pretty much way beyond what any other modellers claim to be able to do). So we ought to do something to reduce the effect we're having.
The problem with this is that it's argument for action from a position of ignorance.
Yes, that's correct - it's an argument for action from a position of some ignorance about the potential results of our current action.
The argument for inaction *now* goes like this:
- we do not have convincing evidence that the current situation is our fault (e.g., the mean temperature hasn't changed much over the last ten years despite increasing CO2 emissions);
The thing is, that if you look at this or this, you're just going to say that all you see is that we came out of a "little ice age" recently (I don't disagree with that by the way), so I'm not going to point at those graphs
Spending $1000 can never make you go from "rich" to "not rich". If you have not much left afterwards, you weren't rich to begin with. If you were rich to begin with, throwing a random $1000 away doesn't really hurt much.
Honestly, I feel a little ashamed about it these days, but back in 1999 when I had more dollars than sense (I was young, I was rich, and the world was scared of Y2K), I once gave an annoying homeless guy $500 to never ever beg on that street again. He kept his end of the bargain too as far as I could tell.
To define life in unequivocal terms is still a challenge for scientists."
Not really - it's a challenge for linguists - scientists can happily continue to do research without needing to define it. (see "Pluto and its planethood")
Ick... that's just nasty. I've never actually come across any software like this. In general, everything I've seen just treats "first name" and "last name" as separate strings, so first name + last name would be something like "Maria\0von Trapp\0". I can see if you treated it as a single string "Maria von Trapp\0" and then tried to determine the last name by getting the text after the last space it could be messy, but I wasn't aware there were any serious developers with that little foresight! (also, isn't it EASIER to work with two strings rather than one and then parsing it?!)
Ah, okay... I thought your original post was meaning the paper should change its name from "Enquirer" to "Inquirer", not that it was already spelled "Inquirer" and that it was spelled incorrectly when being referenced.
There are some scientists who believe the climatic change we are seeing is not a by product of man's industrial activities but part of a natural cycle.
Which just goes to prove that having the job title "scientist" is no indication that you have the slightest clue about the climate. Point me to the research of a serious climatologist that believes this, and I'll read it with interest. Papers by people from outside that specific field - not interested! (hey, I'm a "computer scientist", would you like to read my paper about psychology?)
It all depends on whether you believe that CO2 increases precede or follow temperature change.
Why do you present it as an either/or scenario? There's strong evidence that BOTH are true.
How convenient that we're trying this on the only planet we have and not some spare planet that wouldn't matter if it went awry.
The problem is that it's (most likely) already "gone awry". If we do nothing, we're (most likely) screwed. If we do something, we MIGHT be screwed. It's just a case of taking a better bet over a worse one.
There is also a problem with say, North America makes changes, but growing nations like China and India do not. They will replace our former gas guzzling ways and the sum total is a zero balance.
There's a problem with that logic. Let's say we can define it as some figures (pulled out of a hat) like so:
Current:
US: 500 units
EU: 480 units
China: 100 units
India: 80 units
Total: 1160 units
Your concern is that if we reduce, and they increase, it'll be zero sum, like this: US: 300 units
EU: 300 units
China: 280 units
India: 280 units
Total: 1160 units
MY concern is that if we don't reduce, and they increase, it'll be much worse!: US: 500 units
EU: 480 units
China: 280 units
India: 280 units
Total: 1540 units
While it's not good that they're increasing so much, and we do need to consider how to reduce everything GLOBALLY, not just in certain countries, it makes NO sense to say that just because someone else is increasing that we shouldn't reduce.
It's also worth keeping in mind that there are many environmentally positive things that can be done that do NOT have a huge economic impact. We don't have to "break" ourselves in our efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. Yes, it will cost, but it needn't cost to such a level that we really suffer from it.
(a) that there have been times in the past with wayyy higher CO2 concentrations and
Yes, and it would have been pretty unpleasant for human beings had we been around at the time.
(b) that historically CO2 raises happen *after* temperature raises and
Yep, which just goes to show that if CO2 also causes temperature rises (pretty fairly conclusive that it does), that we'll end up in a rather painful positive feedback loop (CO2 goes up, causing temperature to go up, which causes CO2 to go up more)
(c) some of the measured temperature rise (of course, you are suitably sceptical about those measurements as well, aren't you?) can be explained by the fact we're coming out of an ice age and
I think that's pretty well accepted also, but historically there's nothing similar to what's happening now - we're rising MUCH faster than we should be.
(d) the fact that the Earth is neither a boiling Hellhole nor a ball of ice suggests that fairly effective negative feedback is at work in the climate?
No, that suggests that the Earth is (surprise surprise) a pretty good place for people to live in general. The concern is that it may not stay that way.
The concern is not that temperature is rising - that happens. It rises, it falls - there are perfectly normal cycles to all of this, and as long as we can learn to understand it, we can learn to live with it. What the concern IS is that we appear to be having an effect on our climate and we don't understand enough about what we're doing to it. It currently appears as if our effect is speeding up the "natural" warming quite significantly, and we're having a very hard time trying to figure out what the consequences of this will be. Maybe our effects will be nullified by natural processes and we can just carry on, but maybe they won't be and we'll end up killing ourselves (or just making life extremely unpleasant).
Because we're sitting here at "don't know", we have the choice of either ignoring the situation or trying to do something about it. I UNDERSTAND the arguments for both, but I don't agree with the argument for doing nothing.
The argument for doing nothing basically says, "well, we don't understand it, and doing something could cause economic problems. Because we don't understand it, we can't necessarily do anything about it.".
The argument for doing something goes, "We don't understand it, but we are certain that we are having an impact of some kind, and that has the potential to be very bad (it also has the potential to not be bad, but we're pretty sure it will be bad, and we don't want to take the gamble). So, what we'll do is try to reduce the factors that cause our effect."
We may not completely understand our climate, but:
1) We CAN see we're having an influence on it
2) We aren't 100% certain, but are pretty sure that our influence on it will cause long term bad effects
3) We are quite confident we know the cause of our effect on the climate (CO2 amongst many other things)
Because of this, the sensible choice seems to be "let's try to reduce or negate the effect we're having on the environment, because we can't be sure if that effect is going to cause us serious problems or not".
Car analogy time: I know very little about cars, and have to rely on what others tell me. I'm driving my car, and the oil light comes on. I recently changed the oil, and I haven't noticed any leaks, although honestly I wasn't paying much attention before now. My passenger suggests that maybe it's just that a circuit going to the oil light indicator is shorted somewhere, which is why it's showing that, and I really needn't worry - my car will be fine. Now, I can not be certain if he's right or wrong without investigation. So, I take my car to a mechanic, who checks only the circuitry going to the light. He says it's okay. At this point, I can choose to continue driving my car, thinking the mechanic missed something and it really is just a problem with the light, or I can ask the mechanic to check the oil system, even though I know there's going to be a larger financial cost involved in doing so. What should I do?
There's quite a few, and it generally depends on where you're from. Where I grew up, if you said "Saran wrap", people would stare at you blankly. You'd have to say "Glad Wrap"
Others of course include the aforementioned by others Hoover and Xerox, as well as Post It Note, Nescafe, Band Aid, Coke (the drink), Bic, Milo, PalmPilot (now obsolete almost everywhere AFAIK), Aspirin, Google, and others.
I agree with you, however would just like to point out three things:
1) Using "Xerox" as a verb never really happened outside the US - in other English speaking countries, people generally just say "copy" or "photocopy".
2) Not directed at you personally, but someone else said that Xerox invented photocopiers - no, they didn't, although they did introduce the first "office" photocopiers.
3) (and my main point in replying) In ENGLISH there is no central office defining the language. That's not actually true for all languages...
I would have though "enquirer" would be more correct than "inquirer", no? If not, why not?